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Ladz Corner

I am a sophomore transfer from Joliet Junior College. What can I tell you about that school? Absolutely nothing. Instead, I’m eager to write and get to know more about Dordt and what it has to offer. Through this column I won’t be writing about my point of view and how I view everything on campus as a new student. I will be informing readers about my past and the people in my life who I’ve been able to create memories with.

My family members are definitely the people who affect me the most, and I have so many great memories with each and every one. Of course not all memories are cheerful. Some are better than others. One experience that I remember clearly is going to Ottertail, Minnesota, with my grandpa, my brother Adam, and my dad to fish.

Our trip started as a complete train wreck. It all began when the ball on hitch came off while on the road. I do not recall when this happened, but my family likes to assume that it came off somewhere in Wisconsin. As if that wasn’t bad enough, when we finally arrived, nothing wanted to work. The motor? Nope! The trolling motor? Nada. The brand spanking new bobbers? Of course not. Anything that could have gone wrong did go wrong. We even got lost on West Lost Lake. Pretty ironic huh?

To top it off, the fish just would not bite. We sat on the lake, staring at the water and catching nothing but each other’s fishing lines. Fortunately, our luck began to change when we fished on Walker Lake. As we pulled fish after fish out of the water, we decided that our trip might not be a train wreck after all. On Walker Lake, I was lucky enough to have caught a huge walleye, which, if you were wondering, tasted amazing!

As soon as our trip started looking great, huge, black, scary storm clouds rolled in. My Grandpa Floyd, screamed, “If I see lightning, we’re going in.” No way were we going to let a little rain ruin this fishing trip. So what did we do? We decided to turn the boat so that our grandpa couldn’t see the huge strikes of lightning hitting the area in front of us, and shockingly, my grandfather didn’t notice a thing.

We heard a huge boom of thunder at one point. Grandpa is hard of hearing so he asked if it was thunder and we said of course not! The fish were biting all the way up until we got hit with rain. On our way back the white caps rolled over onto grandpa. As he stood on the dock completely soaked I thought to myself, “This is something I will miss one day.”

I am so thankful for the memories that I have gotten to create with my family, and grandfather especially. This one fishing story may mean nothing to anyone else, but it means so much to me because I got to create a great memory with the people I love the most. One day they may be gone but I will hold onto these memories forever.